


she'd never been there before they went and set up the wall

by afrocurl



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Awkwardness, Canon Compliant, College, Coming of Age, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-03 04:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8697370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl
Summary: Jean's first quarter of college is done. Now what?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StefoftheHill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StefoftheHill/gifts).



No one lied when they called Chicago The Windy City. It was always windy around the lake, no matter how far out from the water Jean moved. 

Normally Evanston was quiet when the wind blew, but not today. Of course something had to go wrong on the last day of the quarter.

Chills ran up and down Jean’s body as she walked from her dorm to the one remaining final exam. It was harder with the chill to avoid relying on her powers, but at least she was sure that even as the wind blew, she could keep her scarf and hat secure as well as potentially float herself above the icy walkways.

At least once this final ended, a flight back to New York awaited her. She could go “home” to feel less like the one in ten students who were mutants here and feel as if she wasn’t representing the mutant community all the time.

Even though life was better as an out mutant after Apocalypse was finally handled and the fear had abated, it was still taxing, knowing that people knew what she could do and why she was attending.

-

It was too bad that with campus closing down in the middle of December, Jean had to come home far earlier than any other graduates who chose to live there still.

She was arriving back to Xavier’s well before Scott, and Jubilee. She had yet to ask the Professor what she was supposed to do, but the idea of having to talk to the seniors about school was a horrible idea.

Even if she had survived the first quarter, she was no model student.

In fact she felt like she was anything but. She had managed to keep her powers contained near her roommate, but it felt like she was lying. She felt as if her professors all expected her telepathy to be a help even though she had applied some of Professor Xavier’s own mores and refused to overhear someone unless it was a time of crisis.

She had more than enough time to think about it once she arrived there again. At least that was her plan thanks to a flight that had her finally getting into North Salem around ten am.

-

O’Hare was a nightmare. Literally and figuratively. Jean found that using her powers were preferable to having to skirt around scores of suitcases and backpacks that littered the floor, even if Christmas was still more than ten days away. 

Jean tried to focus on small details as she moved from the check-in section to her gate. She had hours before she landed in New York to think about the changes that had occurred in those three months.

She was a different woman than she’d been when she arrived there in September. She had not only completed all of her classes, typed up all of her papers with only a few stray pages being lost to mistyping, she had also successfully been part of two missions with Mystique, Beast and Quicksilver.

Magneto and the Professor stayed behind, lead them from afar, and they had all managed to survive in the end.

Those missions now seemed like a cakewalk compared to the airport. Even battling Apocalypse felt less demanding than the erratic and boisterous thoughts from all the passengers, eager to be on their way and out of the recycled air.

She arrived at the gate, managed to find some small space to sit on the ground and waited for the plane to arrive and then carry her away to New York.

-

There was a tug on her luggage as soon as she unloaded it from the baggage claim carrier. She had no idea if someone was to meet her - her last phone call had just been to confirm the time and date of her flight and little else - but as she watched her luggage move, she soon saw Erik standing on the curb, looking as if the world were too much to handle.

For him, it probably was. For even though he had a place to stay in the School, he came and went at will, and seemed to find the company of the students offensive.

“Your arrival allowed me to miss the hunt for the Christmas tree, but Charles won’t want me gone too long right now.”

“Oh,” was all she could say. That Erik had come back again might mean a few things - none of them very good - but it could be that he found life on the road far too isolating, even if he had spent ten years in prison.

She couldn’t say that she disliked him after what they had done to rebuild the school, but there was always something in his eyes that made her a bit sad.

“Yes, so let’s get out of here before I have to hear another family happily reunited.”

If that was his opinion on the airport, it surprised her that he had agreed to pick her up at all, though if the choice was a tree finding expedition or this, she’d have chosen this too.

“Sure, Erik. I feel like my fingers are still going to type out all of my essays from muscle memory. If you can distract me enough on the way home, you’ll have my thanks.”

“Well, how’s your long range carrying come along? I doubt you’ve been doing much work with all those students at Northwestern.”

Shit. She was going to have to work on this ride home.

-

The car was left to truly idle after she and Erik pulled in front of the school before a poof of blue smoke appeared at the passenger side door. Kurt and Ororo were now standing in front of her, wide smiles on their faces.

“We ditched the tree finding to see you,” Kurt said, voice less accented now but still the mostly same. Ororo nodded and then created a small tornado to sweep up the luggage Erik had liberated from the car.

“Be careful. I’ve got my typewriter and some books with me. I can’t ignore everything for these three weeks.”

“You’re not going to help with Christmas?”

“I don’t know if the Professor wants me to help. Or if I should since I’m not technically an Xavier’s student.”

Kurt and Ororo both made faces to say that they figured everything that they had done before she left would continue as normal. Was she expected to help with dishes and chores now? This was her home, but not her school.

 _Can we find some time to talk about my role here?_ she sent to Charles, knowing that it was a conversation that needed to be had before everyone else arrived or too many current students looked to her as if she were something other than a graduate.

_Of course, Jean. I think that’s an excellent idea. How does a private lunch sound?_

_After dorm food, the cooking staff here are saviors._ It was true; even though Xaviers’ was still a boarding school, there was something different in cooking for fifty versus cooking for thousands.

Though with Kurt and Ororo already with her, this private lunch would cause other problems. Was Jean an adult to be treated like all of the staff or was she something else?

-

It was rather sad that even Charles had no good answer for how to tackle Jean’s position now.

“You’re the first to come back, and this is your home, so I suppose we’ll have to go by trial and error.”

“And what if the errors are so bad I have no friends?”

Charles tutted. “That won’t happen, I promise. We’ll find a balance. You’re not on the same duties for meals and such, but we’ll find an answer.”

There was only so much Jean could do with the boundless optimism from Charles so she smiled and went back to eating some of the baked chicken and pasta.

-

As soon as classes were done for the day, all of her friends bounded into her room, regardless of the fact that she had locked the door and was looking forward to some time to process what Charles had said.

“No fair, Kurt, you know we have doors for a reason.”

“But you weren’t at lunch and we have to share all of the gossip.”

“You could have written about any of it, you know?”

Ororo piped in, “There’s no fun in that.”

“Yes, there is, and it’s my personal space.” She huffed in annoyance, but she had missed all of their little jokes here. Even though there was a floor full of students in her dorm, she felt awkward and unsure around them. She was well known to certain people and those who knew her were scared. That probably contributed to her single room. It had been a different sort of loneliness from Xavier’s, but it was still loneliness.

Thinking of that just made this break feel awkward and so Jean let that idea filter back into the recess of her mind, and instead tried to laugh along with all of the stories about Kurt and Ororo and the rest of her friends.

-

There was a week of the same before Scott and Julibee returned to Xavier’s. It was as awkward as Jean imagined, but she tried to put on a smile as the other students asked her questions about college and what it was like to be around so many humans after all the time she spent here.

She had no good answers and wasn’t ready to tell them that for all the good that this school did to focus their powers, it also sheltered them from knowing what else they behind the school’s gates.

Scott and Jubilee didn’t have the same problem as Jean, but they had both chosen to stay closer to North Salem, where they could come home more often and feel they were still part of this community.

Smiling became her default expression as everyone kept thinking that this school was what the world was like.

-

Charles found her just after the house had finished celebrating Christmas, Jean sitting in her room alone with some of her new gifts littering the floor.

“You know better than most that the world is not as accepting of us as this school is.” There was no hint of a lie in his words, or in his mind.

“But everyone here seems to think that the world outside is so perfect,” she said.

“For now, I think that is best; they will know what the world is like again when they leave.”

“Shouldn’t we all know that, though?”

“They know it, Jean, but they choose to ignore it. Except Erik, who will never forget what this world is capable of.”

“So I should lie?”

“No, just know what the world is like and remember this place as a comfort when you see the truth again.”

It was a rather callous way to look at what would happen to Kurt and Ororo next year at this time, when they were coming back from colleges.

“Kurt and Ororo know the world and they’ll survive it just as they have before.”

That he was reading her mind right now felt like a small comfort given that she didn’t want to process everything that could happen in the future.

“You may have saved the world, Jean, but we all still must live in it.”

Charles wheeled himself out of the room, then, and left Jean to think too much about the small little bubble this place created for her and her friends.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [redacted] for the help - big and small.
> 
> Title is from "Chicago at Night" by Spoon.


End file.
